Galileo warned the catholic church that if they insisted that the sun went around the Earth and evidence irrefutably proved the Earth went around the sun it was the catholic church that would end up looking stupid. No matter the power they had to limit the dissemination of his proofs and over his own life, he was assured that reason was a gift given throughout the human race and no one organisation nor one ruler can stop reason indefinitely.
I was once talking to a liberal who said the UK should not have fought Hitler, that Hitler would have gone the way of all things and Nazism would have mutated and vanished along with every other political ideal over the course of history and war would have been averted. I fervently disagree with him but the span of history shows that what we think important today, is not in a hundred years. Our antagonisms look backward and strange to future generations.
And yet those same antagonisms come back again and again only with different names, in different guises. No Canute did not stop the sea coming in, and the Inquisition failed to stem the flood of reason but reactionary forces always come to the fore, because reason gives evidence and evidence requires change and human beings are given to the status quo.
But like the liberal I once knew, the status quo can make cowards of us all.